


here everyone knows you’re the way to my heart

by toddxnderson



Category: The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: (its canonical dw), Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Blood and Injury, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Princess!Leah, Tags to be added, adventurer!fatin, i just think that fatin with a sword, no beta we die like jeanette, not too graphic, the family tree is complicated dont worry about it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29663601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toddxnderson/pseuds/toddxnderson
Summary: travelling adventurer fatin jadmani is content with her life- exploring the depth and breadth of the vast land known as The Wilds, everything feels like a quest.when she arrives at a small village outpost and meets a guarded, beautiful healer, she finds herself falling in love. but leah is no village girl, and when the royal guards arrive, fatin is thrust into a dangerous new world.aka the leatin fantasy au that like two people asked for
Relationships: Fatin Jadmani/Leah Rilke, Shelby Goodkind/Toni Shalifoe
Comments: 17
Kudos: 80





	1. i

**Author's Note:**

> so today i saw [this post](https://twitter.com/hertruelove/status/1364036343236489219) on twitter and couldn’t do anything for the rest of the day except write this au.
> 
> the world is inspired by merlin and legend of zelda: breath of the wild aka the two things i am currently obsessed with (help me) this’ll probably be my longest fic yet, which im excited about! but my life is v busy atm so updates may be sporadic. ANYWAY
> 
> (thank u viv for the phoebe bridgers title)
> 
> (if ur here wondering why i still haven’t updated ‘tis the damn season, i am so so sorry)

The fire crackled gently away into the night, a tiny breath of heat against the darkening sky. 

Fatin watched the soft amber light wash over Toni’s face. The shadows that lingered around her travelling companion’s nose and eyes made her look almost brooding as she stared into it, poking at the crumbling logs with her makeshift skewer. A handful of the mushrooms they had gathered that afternoon lay limp on the end, blackening and burning in the heat, but the girl didn’t seem to notice, gazing blankly at the skewer as it caught fire.

“Are you trying to torture your food, or are you just being thorough?” Fatin asked, letting the sarcasm drip from her words.

Toni startled, but her glare quickly melted into an easy smile. She jerked her meal away from the fire and blew out the flames; it was burnt, and probably totally inedible, but if Fatin knew her, she was certain that no amount of charring would keep Toni from her food.

Sure enough, after close inspection, she ripped a mushroom from the end and tossed it into her mouth, hardly seeming to mind the fact that just seconds ago it had been alight. “Sorry,” she said as she chewed. “Not too bad. Still tastes like mushroom.”

“Thoroughly singed mushroom.” 

The two grinned at each other, but Toni’s eyes were still distant.

“Someone’s pensive,” Fatin teased, drawing her knees up to her chest. The fire didn't keep all of the cold out, and her thin, increasingly ragged clothes certainly didn’t help. “Got somebody on your mind?”

Even in the half light, she could see the way the other girl flushed red. 

“Shut up. No, it’s just... we’re a day’s travel from Eve.”

Fatin nodded. She remembered a little too well the conversation they’d had with the local woman they’d met on the pathway two days ago; a pretty young thing about their age, with black hair in the neat style of a well-born citizen. Gathering herbs, she had explained unprompted, holding up a bag filled with an array of sweet smelling plants. Medicine for the Queen of Eve. Eveathem, as the kingdom was properly known.

The mention of a queen had startled them both. They hadn’t seen another person outwith their travelling party in several weeks in this isolated, monster infested region, and hadn’t really known how far it would be until they found civilisation again.

“Eveathem? Are you sure?” Then, so quickly the words seemed to trip over each other- “Where?”

The girl obliged. “Straight South West from here. Keep on this path until you reach a stone marker with the head of a lion- that’s about halfway. The path does go all the way to Eve, but it’ll take you ages- turn right and head directly through the forest until you hit a cobble road, and follow that. It should be clear from there.”

“How long does it take?”

“I’ve been walking for three days, but with a horse it’d only be one.”

Toni shot her a suspicious glance. They very obviously didn’t have a horse. 

“If you’re on royal business, shouldn’t _you_ have a horse?” Fatin asked slowly. The girl’s gaze very quickly slipped into discomfort. 

Instead of an excuse, the girl said, “I’m Jeanette. Who are you?” 

And was immediately snatched into the gaping maw of a giant reptilian head and swallowed whole.

Sitting in the early summer darkness many miles from that part of the trail didn’t make Fatin feel any safer than she had then. “Don’t feel bad for what happened to that girl. It was hardly our fault,” she said, though the writhing snake of guilt curled tight around her insides even as she spoke. It had been their fault. If they hadn’t held her up in the middle of a dangerous stretch of path, if Fatin had been a little quicker retrieving her sword... well, anything might have happened. The poor woman likely wouldn’t have ended up as the evening meal for a basilisk. But as it was, they’d been too late, and they’d have to live with that. Travelling the way they did- well, death was an occupational hazard. Jeanette, whoever she was, would have known that too. “And anyway, we had our revenge.” She reached instinctively for the fang she had retrieved from the creature. It was as long as her hand, from fingertip to wrist. Why she’d taken it, she wasn’t sure. A good weapon? Maybe. 

But Toni shook her head. “That’s not what I’m thinking about.” 

“What is it, then?” 

Pressing her like this felt natural; since meeting on a trail in the central Wilds six months previously, they’d squeezed nearly every piece of background information from each other. Toni had been reluctant at first, but she’d worn down to Fatin’s constant teasing, and now she had a pretty good lay of the other girl’s early life in the northwest, her family, her friends. But there were still things she didn’t know, and it grated at her, irritated her skin like rough cloth. 

Toni sighed. “There was... d’you remember that friend I told you about? The weaver’s daughter?”

Fatin nodded. 

“A couple of years ago she headed off to stay with her cousin somewhere in the southwest. I got a few letters- she said she’d found a job in some kingdom, working in the castle. We lost contact after that, but I just wonder...”

“If she might be in Eve?”

Toni didn’t react, but Fatin knew her assumption was right. 

“Look, if we do get there and we find her, that’s great. And if not, we still get actual beds for a night or two, and enough money to take us from here to the end of the Wilds. Hey, who knows- might even get an audience with the Queen. We sure as hell deserve compensation for all the monsters we’ve cleared along the way,” Fatin said, reaching across the fire and giving Toni a playful shove, but it didn’t lighten the mood in the way she had hoped. They both knew well enough what this kingdom signalled for them; the beginning of the end. The months they had spent travelling together- it would be no understatement to call them the best of Fatin’s life. She never would have suspected she’d enjoy surviving in the wilderness as much as she did, and she was more than handy with a sword. Perhaps she could find a place as a knight once their journey ended. But Toni was a good friend, a loyal and brave companion with her own fiery brand of anger and a spear that would give any logical monster nightmares, and if they reached the very edge of the Wilds and found nothing waiting for them, leaving her behind was going to sting, and the additional factor of an old friend worried Fatin even more. But they’d made their agreement. She would have to honour that. 

A gust of wind shuddered through the branches of the looming pines, dimming the fire and ruffling Toni’s careful plaits with a steady howl. Fatin’s hand flew to the sword at her hip, but she hesitated before pulling it from its sheath. What was she intending to do? Fight the wind?

Toni snorted. “Talk about jumpy, Jadmani.” 

“Thought I heard something.”

“Yeah. The wind.”

“No,” Fatin replied, glancing into the dark undergrowth that surrounded their small clearing. “Sounded... kind of like an animal.” 

Toni raised an eyebrow, but it was clear that she was listening now, too. After a few moments of silence infused by the soft night breeze, she shook her head and laughed.

“There’s nothing out there. We’d have seen it during the day. But you can take first watch, since you’re on high-alert.” 

Fatin sighed, but she didn’t protest as her companion lay back on the grass, using her knapsack as a pillow. 

“Don’t crush those herbs, asshole,” she said in mock anger, “they’re worth less if your head’s been squashing them.”

But Toni was already snoring. 

Rolling onto her knees, Fatin tossed the remainders of Toni’s mushroom skewer into the fire and sat with her back to the heat, unsheathing her sword as she did so. She loved its comforting weight, loved the sharp steel and the way the leather grip sat in her hand like it had spent its life in her hand, not just a few months. It made her braver, just having it there. A reminder that she wasn’t who she had been before. 

She stared out into the forest, and hoped to God it wasn’t staring back. 

“Sleep well, Toni,” she muttered. “Let’s see if we make it to dawn.”

As it happened, they did make it to dawn. 

Toni took over shift somewhere in the hazy hours before first light, and, though she’d struggled to settle at first, Fatin was grateful for the sleep. She was fit, but travelling was exhausting, especially with the ridiculous distances they’d been travelling each day, and she needed to ensure she got decent rest. Her body screamed at her enough with a full night’s sleep. 

The birds woke her before Toni did. Light was filtering in through the trees, gentle and butter-soft, illuminating the clearing around her in clear, sturdy gold. It was prettier than it had appeared in the half-light; red and pink wildflowers were strewn through the long pale grass, and the pines that lined the edges formed a near perfect circle. Even with the crackling of the fire and the chaotic hum of birdsong, Fatin could hear the faint trickle of running water as it crept steadily through the surrounding forest, collecting, she guessed, in some kind of nearby pool. The wind had all but stopped. 

She sat up and blinked groggily, a sweet smell filling her nose. Toni was hunched over by the fire, poking what looked like some kind of fruit as it cooked in the embers, humming under her breath. When she spotted Fatin, she grinned. 

“Here, have one,” she said, throwing her one from the pile that sat beside her to cool. Fatin caught it and inspected it warily. It was big enough, about the size of her fist, and had clearly once been red, though the fire had shrivelled its skin to a coppery colour. It smelled like honey. 

“What are these?”

“Dunno.”

“Are you sure they’re safe to eat?”

Toni shrugged. “I’ve had four.” 

Fatin bit into it cautiously, still unsure of her chances of death by poisoning, but as the juices filled her tongue, her fears were assuaged. It was even sweeter than honey, and reminded her of something tucked away deep in the back of her mind, something childish and unnameable. 

“Good, huh?”

Fatin wiped the juice from her mouth. “Where’d you find them?”

“Just in the forest, couple of metres from the stream. The trees were full of ‘em so I thought, hey, why not?”

“You left camp?”

“Only for twenty minutes. You were snoring, you didn’t notice. Anyway, I wasn’t looking for fruit. The fire was running down. We didn’t collect enough wood yesterday.” 

After finishing the fruit in a single bite, Fatin rolled onto her back and stared up at the lightening sky. “I could have got killed by a monster. You could have come back here and found my skeleton,” she said playfully. It was difficult to ever really be angry with Toni. 

“Would’ve been a relief,” Toni replied, grinning.

“Oh, as if. You wouldn’t survive three seconds without me.”

“Without your whining we might get there faster.”

Fatin laughed loudly.

That was her fatal mistake. 

A growl echoed from the dense woods to the left of the clearing, one so full of pure, evil rage that it made every hair on Fatin’s neck shoot upright and sent her stomach into free fall. Something about it was almost familiar, mocking, but she had no clue what. It gave an edge to her fear. She shot Toni a hard, desperate look that she hoped carried the intended message: don’t move a muscle. Don’t make a sound. 

They waited, frozen in place, the silence so taut over the world that Fatin felt she could break it with her hands. 

No more sounds came. 

After what felt like an eternity but might have only been five minutes, Toni jerked her head forward, to the narrow strip between the trees that they’d planned to follow, carved out by an animal, by the looks of it. The thick woods would hopefully hide them from whatever it was that had made those horrible sounds; in the clearing, they were sitting ducks. 

Toni nimbly rolled to her feet, fingernails stuffed with mud from where she’d apparently been gripping the ground to keep herself silent. Fatin looked down at her own hands, and realised she’d been doing the same. 

They gathered their belongings faster than ever before- impressive, as at this stage in the journey, they were carrying a lot. Besides their weapons, there was food, medical supplies, a single change of clothes, and the items they’d gathered since they’d last encountered a salesman, none of which could be sacrificed without a significant degree of discomfort. At the last minute, they kicked out the fire and left the fruit sitting in a pile. With any luck, it’d prove a distraction for the beast. With their luck, they’d get lost in the forest and starve to death.

Fatin led as they sprinted into the darkness of the tangled mass of tree trunks. It was an incredibly tight fit, and the trail was every bit as difficult and dangerous as she’d feared it would be, twisting sharply through the woods that were so dense she could barely see a foot through the thicket. Gnarled roots glared up at her like horrible faces, mocking and threatening to trip her with every misplaced step. Unwillingly, she remembered a ghost story told to her by a childhood friend- that the people you could see in the trees were the spirits who had performed acts of great cruelty in their lifetimes and had been cast into eternal torment, taking their revenge by tripping lost children and trapping them in the forest forever. Very cheery. Not exactly helpful.

 _One wrong step and you’re dead,_ the faces told her. 

_Shut the fuck up,_ she replied.

Then suddenly the path was gone, replaced by skittering dirt that flew out from under her feet and, too late, Fatin realised that the ground had vanished from directly under her and she was standing with one leg hanging out over a gorge, about to press her full weight into empty air.

She would have fallen thirty feet if Toni hadn’t been so quick, grabbing her by the collar of her shirt and yanking her backwards so that they both fell into the dirt, heads missing a tree by about two inches. 

“Shit,” Fatin gasped. Her body still felt unbalanced, like half of her was falling on its own. 

“Maybe we should slow down,” Toni said, looking almost as shaken as Fatin felt.

“Yeah, let’s- let’s just get out of here, please?” She tried to hide the tremble in her voice, but didn’t succeed. Her legs wobbled. She didn’t trust herself to stand. 

Fortunately, Toni helped her to her feet, holding her up by the elbows until she was steady enough to stay vertical on her own. 

_What the hell is wrong with me?_ she wondered. She never got like this. She was Fatin Jadmani, fearless adventurer. She wasn’t fazed by anything; not beasts, not basilisks, and certainly not heights. 

But standing there over the gorge, between one heartbeat and the next...

“C’mon. We want to get out of here before nightfall, and I have no idea how long it’ll take,” Toni said, moving off along the path, which veered sharply away from the drop and back into the darkness. 

As they walked, they talked quietly. The initial terror of the monstrous noises was starting to wear off, and Toni’s stupid jokes were a good distraction from the ugly churning of thoughts at the back of Fatin’s mind, which was starting to feel like a riding a horse. A feral one. With no saddle.

She couldn’t even begin to comprehend how Jeannette had managed this path by herself, with no weapon. She’d been a little suspicious of the girl’s claims to royal employment, but now her doubts were more serious. Could she have intentionally led them astray? To their deaths?

Maybe Fatin shouldn’t be so upset about the basilisk incident. 

Their conversation turned towards their destination. Toni spoke of the unnamed place her friend had described in her letters, of twisting turrets and rosy stained glass and winding streets so clean you could eat off them, if you wanted- and especially of the dawns, how the whole sky filled with more colours than anyone could possibly count; a tapestry of light.

Fatin nodded and agreed that yes, the place Toni’s friend had been staying sounded very much like descriptions of Eveathem she’d heard in the past, though really she had no idea. 

“I didn’t like her going, y’know, but if she was somewhere that perfect...” Toni said, trailing off. “I just- I hope we’re heading to the same place.”

“I hear Eveathem’s very beautiful.” It wasn’t a total lie- Fatin had definitely heard that once, but her memories of her parents’ discussions about the place weren’t to do with its beauty, but rather its politics. There had been a swirling debate that had been so controversial it had thundered its way to the far reaches of Fatin’s own kingdom. Something about royal lineage, maybe, or a scandal of some degree. The details were hazy, but she was certain there had been something. 

She hoped they’d sorted their issues out in the twelve interceding years. It would be just their luck to walk directly into a civil war.

As it turned out, she had bigger problems. Very serious, very immediate problems. 

Their talking had been a good distraction- too good. Fatin’s senses, usually heightened when she travelled through terrain as difficult as this, had been dulled by comfort. She hadn’t heard the telltale sound of far-off leaves crushing underfoot, nor had she noticed the way they increased in pace and volume. 

It was only when a loud crash sounded from behind them, the noise of a tree being felled, that she took notice. On instinct, she and Toni both swivelled towards the sound, flicking back into gear. And then a howl, closer closer closer, that same raw, untamed evil shaking the very ground. 

“Duck,” Toni said, so quiet Fatin barely heard her below the uproar.

“What?”

“Duck!” she screamed, tackling Fatin and pushing her to the ground, hard. 

The forest exploded. 

Fatin looked up, and saw only teeth. Teeth was almost an understatement; yellowed and jagged and caked with the remnants of past meals, sharpened to needle points exactly right for piercing skin, they almost made her miss the basilisk. She lay frozen in shock, desperately scrabbling around for some semblance of a plan, but her brain was floundering on the rocks, incapable of processing even the sight that lay before her. 

_God, I hope my teeth don’t look like that,_ she thought. 

Luckily, Toni was more alert than Fatin, driving her spear into what must have been the creature’s neck. There was another outraged howl of pain and the teeth surged up and away from Fatin’s face, allowing her to get a good look at what they were up against. She wished she hadn’t. 

Fatin knew dogs. She knew wolves. She was certain that this _thing_ had been compared to both in the past, and she was even more sure the comparison was stupid. For starters, what stood before was five, maybe six times the size of even a large wolf, and its fur was pure, silky black. It snarled at them, blood dripping from a puncture wound at its neck- _thank you, Toni-_ baring those teeth again, mouth opening so wide Fatin stumbled back into a tree, looking wildly around for anything that could possibly give her the upper hand. 

There was nothing but wilderness. 

Right, new idea. They could draw the beast back deeper into the forest, and then- and then what? They’d just be more isolated from anyone who might have been able to help, with less space to move, less space to fight, and the creature was forcing them back anyway, pushing them back in what she really, really hoped wasn’t the direction of the gorge. She felt sluggish, half asleep. Her mind should have been on fire, coming up with plans and insults at ten times the usual speed, but it seemed to have stalled completely.

Fatin shouldn’t have been scared. She’d fought worse monsters on an empty stomach with less sleep and a blunter weapon, but this fight felt sour, somehow rotten. The beast seemed to radiate her own fear right back at her, turning up the dial on her senses and leaving her with the distinct feeling that she’d just been slapped awake- and, worst of all, thoughts came crawling to the forefront of her mind, ugly ones. Childhood phobias she thought she’d buried. Her parents’ faces. The way her brother had looked up at her the night she’d run away, how hopeful and innocent he’d seemed, and suddenly she found herself stifling sobs.

 _in the middle of a fight, you idiot,_ she thought, but she was shaking so badly she could barely keep her sword in her hand. Toni had retreated to the edge of the small clearing the creature had formed, spear gripped tight in preparation for an attack from the side, but her face was tight with a grim expression that told Fatin she wasn’t the only one who was terrified. 

In that instant she knew it was hopeless. The creature was twice their height, disturbingly long, and the thick fur rippled with what she knew must have been layers upon layers of muscle as tough as leather. 

She was going to die. 

But she couldn’t let Toni think it was hopeless. The other girl was still launching her attacks on the beast, swiping and stabbing, but was only drawing a few sounds of pain from the creature. It was bigger and slower, yes, but the two of them could only fight for so long without getting exhausted and making a fatal mistake; they could run, but where? They’d lost the track long ago. Besides, the animal could easily outpace them. This wasn’t a battle they could win by brute force. Maybe they could have beat it with intelligence, but that required a fully working brain, and Fatin’s seemed to be closed for maintenance. 

No use fumbling around for an easy way out. No use waiting for victory to come to her. 

Fatin unsheathed her sword and charged.

Fighting alongside Toni was a privilege, and if she had to die, she’d be glad enough to do so at her friend’s side. They’d fought so many monsters along their journey that they almost battled as one, anticipating the other’s moves, surging forward, falling back and charging with such agility Fatin felt like she was flying. Their styles complemented each other perfectly; Toni’s fierce, erratic stabbing movements caught enemies off guard, while Fatin’s was more controlled, beautiful, even- show fighting, Toni called it, and she couldn’t deny that she enjoyed the glamorous element to swordplay. They took turns keeping the head distracted while the rest of the body writhed around, trying to knock back whoever was piercing its hide with their weaponry. 

For about a half-second, Fatin felt a tiny flare of hope. This might work. They might survive. She slashed desperately at the creature’s stomach, only just registering the random, crazed taunts Toni was hurling at the thing’s ugly head, hoping that any second now it would howl and collapse to the ground in agony. 

And then the tail swung back, then forward, then a wall of black fur collided with her, knocking her high into the air and back, back, back into the woods. For a sudden panicked moment, she thought she was going to slam into a tree, but instead she hit a patch of dry mud, slamming painfully into the ground at such a speed all the wind was knocked out of her. She stumbled, wheezing, to her feet, trying to figure out how she was going to find her way back to the fight, but a series of thunderous footsteps confirmed that the fight was, in fact, coming to her. 

She knew she couldn’t fight the beast alone. But as it surged towards her, she realised that Toni was nowhere to be seen and, sticking out of its shoulder, was her spear. Fatin forced down a surge of terror and grief. Where was she? What had happened? 

Chances were she’d never find out. 

With one great surge of adrenaline, she charged once again, slashing with her sword, but the creature was prepared this time. It lifted its impossibly large paw and, before Fatin could even register the movement, raked its claws across her leg. 

The pain surged white hot through her body, so intense it was disorientating. She fell back onto the ground, staring in panic as blood flooded the ragged strips of cloth her trousers had become. Her vision filled with dark spots- was that a symptom of blood loss or shock? She had no idea.

 _Toni,_ she thought. _This is for Toni._

Using the very last vestiges of her strength, she forced herself up onto her good leg, and flung her sword wildly in what she hoped was the creature’s direction. There was a howl of agony that she hoped didn’t come from her, then another knife-sharp claw across her stomach, and she felt herself falling back, back, back, the black spots overtaking the rest of her vision. She didn’t even feel herself hit the ground. 

There was a hand on her arm. 

It was warm and soft, so different to her own work-roughened fingers. Someone was talking to her- the hand’s owner?- but the voice was more like buzzing, and she couldn’t pick the different words apart. 

She opened her eyes. 

The dark green hues of the forest were still there, blurring around the corners of her vision, but there was something else, too. A face. A very pretty face, the face of a girl with startling blue eyes and dark brown hair that fell across her cheeks as she shook Fatin. She looked worried- ok, understandable, but more than that- she looked angry. 

“Are you fucking _insane?”_ the girl said.

And the world went black.


	2. ii

Consciousness came back slowly.

First was the smell. It was odd, though not entirely unfamiliar- Fatin recognised lavender, just like her mother had always kept in the house when her brothers were young, as well as something almost like peppermint. But there were other, stranger fragrances, too, heady and thick in the air. Sweet intermingled with scents so bitter they seemed to linger on Fatin’s tongue.

She drifted peacefully, half-sleeping, listening to the gentle pipes of birdsong and the spitting hiss of fire that almost convinced her she was back at the camp with Toni, sprawled out in the forest while fruit cooked and the herbs in her backpack diffused their odd, brittle fragrance into the air. That must be it. Where else could she be?

But as her body became accustomed to her surroundings- as her arms brushed up against the soft threads of what might have been a blanket or cloak of some kind, as the warmth of the fire soaked through her skin and deep into her bones- memories began to slide into place in her mind. Toni, charging with her spear. Blood dripping from yellowed fangs. The sky so far above her, distant and dizzyingly blue.

She blinked awake. 

Someone was staring right at her.

“Toni?” she managed, though her tongue felt like lead in her sandpapered mouth. 

The girl’s face warped in her vision. She had dark hair, but the similarities to Toni ended there. Her blue eyes were icy with intelligence, lined with the sort of creases that Fatin knew came with many long hours squinting over books in the dark, and her whole face carried a haughty, distant humour. 

And Fatin _recognised_ her, _knew_ her, with such intensity it hurt. She struggled to place her for a moment, then it clicked. It was the girl from the forest.

 _Who are you?_ Fatin wanted to ask, but as she opened her mouth, a flash of heat sank through her body, metallic in her gut, and the words came out more as a pained grunt. 

The girl’s expression flickered with concern. “Who’s Toni?” she asked. 

Fatin couldn’t find the words to respond, and before she knew it, the world was slipping back into oblivion. 

When she woke again, she was alone. 

Her eyes recoiled at the steady light that reverberated in the room like the opening notes of a musical piece- it was everywhere, soaking into the bones of the place.

Sun leaked through high glass windows, spilling into reflecting pools on the roughened oak floorboards. A thick desk of dark wood sat comfortably in the centre, carpeted in a vast array of herbs and flowers that spanned the entire colour spectrum. In the small workspace that had been cleared, a fine brown powder sat crushed in a mortar, and a vial of orange liquid bubbled and churned where it stood.

There was a hearth standing behind it, fire blazing full and amber, with an iron pot strung across, whistling at a pitch that pierced Fatin’s ears. The other walls were occupied by row upon row of shelving, all of it heaped with possessions; one was stuffed completely with books, dusty with age; another had layers of glass jars, some empty, others glowing with colour; the third, by the door, was balanced with three levels of delicate equipment. 

Fatin shook herself and tried to sit up, but a dull ache squeezed at her lungs and she fell back again, blinking spots out of her vision. It was noon, she guessed, judging by the way the sunlight fell, somewhere warm, and she was alone. Where was Toni? 

Footsteps thudded softly from just outside the window, rapid and rhythmic, just fast enough to set Fatin’s teeth on edge. They stopped outside the house, and the knob turned. 

A figure appeared in the doorway, silhouetted sharply against the sun. A girl, tall and teenage, dressed simply in a blue skirt that reached her calves and some sort of white bodice, with a book clutched firmly in her hands. She muttered something under her breath as her fingers tore hungrily through the pages. 

“You’re awake,” she said, without glancing up.

“Uh, yeah,” Fatin replied, disguising a wince as her stomach protested the movement. “Yeah, you- you don’t seem so pleased.”

With a small sigh, the girl abandoned her book and moved towards her, watching her with an inquisitive look, like Fatin was some fascinating test subject who’d just proved her hypothesis.

“I’m pleased. I’m just surprised.”

“Surprised?” 

“Whoever you are, whatever you were doing out there- you should have died. You absolutely would have died, if I didn’t find you when I did.”

“Who are you?” Fatin asked, trying to prop herself up with the crook of her elbow and slipping back, too quickly to stop herself crying out at ragged burst of pain that shot across her middle. 

The girl rushed forward to push her down. She raised an eyebrow. “Just curious. Are you trying to make yourself worse?”

Fatin glared in reply.

“Didn’t think so. Rest now, questions later.”

“I’ve rested enough,” Fatin said, trying for indignation, but the warmth and strange comfort of the room pressed on her chest with much more force than the girl’s hands.

“Sleep’s a better medicine than anything I can give you. So sleep.”

 _Maybe just a little,_ she thought, but even the implication of that soft vulnerability nearly sent her spinning back into sleep, and she shook herself awake with as much feeble ferocity as she could manage. 

“Where’s Toni?”

The girl frowned. “You keep asking about her. I don’t know who that is.”

“She’s my friend. We were in the woods together, and she-” Fatin broke off, the dizziness catching up with her in a sudden, violent rush.

“There was no one else in the woods. Just you,” the girl was saying, looking slightly distressed. “I didn’t see anyone, or I would’ve taken them back too.”

“She can’t have just gone somewhere,” Fatin insisted, though she knew how delirious she sounded even as she said it, the words spilling all over the place. 

The girl pressed a hand to Fatin’s forehead and frowned. “You’ve got a temperature. God, you’d better not have got yourself infected.”

Before she could protest about how it couldn’t possibly have been her fault, she was silenced by the sting of bandages being unravelled from her leg, and had to squeeze her eyes tight to keep herself from making a noise. 

“Nothing yet. You should have some tea, though- some more yarrow won’t hurt.” She rose and strode towards the fire, pouring boiling water from the pot into a small cup and straining something through it, what looked to be a cluster of small white flowers. She worked efficiently, like the knowledge had been welded into her hands. 

Once she was satisfied, she pressed the cup into Fatin’s hands and pulled a chair up to the bedside, watching her drink.

“So,” she said, absent-mindedly flicking a pencil between her fingers, “are you planning on telling me what the hell you were doing bleeding out in the middle of the woods? Or am I just going to have to read between the lines?”

Fatin studied her. A pensive frown was stitched into her forehead, but something sparked in her eyes, a kind of playful curiosity.

“Believe it or not, it wasn’t intentional.”

“No? So taking on a beast the size of a house was an accident?” 

Before Fatin could open her mouth to reply, the girl cut her off. “Don’t lie to me. I saw your sword.”

“Where is it?”

“That’s not something you should be worrying about.”

”It’s my sword, I need it!”

“Get better. Your lethal weapon can wait.” She sighed. “Look, it’s not in any shape to be fighting with, anyway. I asked my friend to take a look at it for me, see if she can fix it.”

Fatin relaxed a little, let her spine rest against the smooth cloth covering the bed. She hated to admit it, but sleep was still unfairly tempting. 

“So.” The girl sat back in her chair, smirking. It looked good on her, casual sarcasm, fit like a tight dress. “Are you just some jumped up local idiot with a sword, or an adventurer, or what? I’d ask if you were a knight, but you weren’t wearing the royal gear.”

 _Weren’t?_ For the first time, Fatin glanced down at herself and saw that her well-loved shirt was gone, along with the red trousers she’d stolen from a clothesline in the first city she’d passed through months ago, right at the start of the trail. They’d been replaced by a simple undyed tunic, clearly much too big and smelling faintly of oranges.

“You stole my clothes?”

“Stole? They were hanging off your body in bloody rags. I couldn’t even use them for cleaning scraps, they were such a mess!”

Oh. That was an admittedly fair point. Fatin sagged back, before remembering that she was supposed to be pissed off.

“Hey, I think I should get a few questions in.”

The girl’s face twisted in irritation, but she nodded. “Go on.”

“What’s your name?”

She hesitated, like she wasn’t entirely sure how to answer. Her fidgeting with the pencil grew faster and more nervous. “Leah,” she said finally.

“Is that your _real_ name?”

“Yes!”

“You don’t sound sure.”

‘Leah’ rolled her eyes. “Leah is my real name. You can believe it or not, I don’t care. None of my business if you choose not to trust me. But, given that you’ve been in my house, largely unconscious, for the better part of four days, I’d probably say it’s fair to trust me.”

Fatin nodded slowly. “Alright. And what are you?”

“I’ll give you three guesses,” Leah replied, spreading her arms across the room. Herbs. Cloth bandages. A million different brightly coloured liquids in weirdly shaped glass bottles. 

“You’re a healer.”

Leah hummed in agreement. “And it’s a good thing I am, or you would _absolutely_ be dead by now.”

“So where am I?”

“Uh-uh. My turn.” She leaned in. “Where are you from? What do you do?”

“That’s two questions.”

“You got two.”

“Fine,” Fatin said. “I’m from a kingdom in the northeast. Don’t ask, you won’t have heard of it. And I’m a traveller. I travel. I gather and sell things. Me and Toni...” She trailed off, suppressing the lump in her throat. Now that the dizziness of unconsciousness was wearing off, the ache of Toni’s vanishing was sharper and more jagged in her chest.

“The girl you were talking about?” Leah’s face was surprisingly gentle. “I’m sorry. You were the only one there when I got there. I really don’t know where she is.”

“No, no, it’s not your fault. I just-” she let out a noise, pushed it into the shape of a sigh to stop it from becoming a sob. “-this is sort of. Quite a lot.”

“Oh, no, yeah. Sorry.” The girl, Leah, was beginning to look uncomfortable, an awkwardness in the set of her jaw, like she’d just walked in on the wrong person’s funeral and was struggling to give out condolences. 

They sat in bristling silence for a moment. 

“You don’t have to be sorry. You saved my life,” Fatin said, avoiding her gaze. “I haven’t thanked you enough for that.”

She glanced up to see Leah looking genuinely surprised. “Oh, it was nothing. I’d have done it for anyone.”

“But you did it for me. So I’m thanking you.” 

“Oh, well-”

“You don’t have to be all modest about it. Can I just say thank you?”

Leah nodded, an unmistakable flush in her cheeks. “Um. Yeah. You’re welcome.”

“You’re not very good at taking compliments,” Fatin teased. 

A wry smile appeared on Leah’s lips. “Out of practice.”

“So where are we, then?” 

A look flashed across Leah’s face, too quickly for Fatin to identify the emotion in it. Sadness, perhaps, or the skittish surprise of a rabbit, even something close to fear, though she shrugged that suspcion away. It didn’t make sense. What would anyone have to fear from a question like that?

But Leah already seemed more distant than a stranger; an untraversable impasse, a lock set in the corners of her mouth. It wouldn’t surprise Fatin if she was keeping more than a few secrets. 

To her slight surprise, however, Leah let out a small huff and replied. “Small village, maybe five miles out from Eveathem. That was where you were trying to go, wasn’t it?” she asked, not bothering to mask the distrust in her voice. 

“Yes.”

“Funny route to take.”

“Someone told us it was shorter.”

“Someone has a weird sense of humour, then. Trudging through the Lost Woods won’t do anything but get you lost.”

“Well, if they’d told me it was called the _Lost Woods_ , I might have been able to figure that out for myself,” Fatin replied with a small snort. “Barely made it to where I got to, anyway. I almost fell off a cliff.”

Leah’s eyes glinted with amusement. “That, I can believe.”

Fatin opened her mouth to respond, but the movement was, apparently, the final straw for her body, and it was rather difficult to be sarcastic when your lower half felt like it was being ripped wide open. It was all she could do to suppress a scream. 

Leah’s face softened. She snatched a small vial from the shelf behind her, one filled with a thick green liquid that reminded Fatin of a myriad of unpleasant things, and offered it to her.

“Drink,” she said. “It tastes gross, but it’ll help with the pain.”

Fatin obliged, wincing as it hit her tongue. Leah certainly hadn’t been lying about the taste. 

“I’ve kept you awake for too long. Get better. Rest. There’ll be plenty of time to talk.”

Fatin did rather a lot of resting over the following days. 

In her waking moments, Leah was there. Sometimes she would be busying herself with her work, crushing sweet-smelling flowers and muttering under her breath; others, she read from the heavy, dusty tomes that were so thick they made Fatin’s head spin just to look at. Many more still, she would speak to Fatin, about anything at all. The colours of the sunset. The knowledge she planned to fill her empty books with, richer than earth and more useful, too. The seasonal plants she hoped to gather from the neighbouring meadows, eventually. 

“They’re dangerous, though,” she said. “Guarded by a bunch of ogres.”

“Need someone to protect you?”

Leah bit back a smile. “Very funny. I wouldn’t pick you, if I had the choice.”

Fatin scoffed, feigning outrage. “I’ll have you know I am an _excellent_ fighter.”

“Given all I’ve seen of your fighting is you dying on the ground, I think I’ll pass.”

But beyond their good-natured interactions, Leah still seemed distant. The few further questions Fatin tentatively asked her about herself were met with either uncomfortable silence or a terse “That’s none of your business.” 

Many days she disappeared without so much as a word as to where she was going, and though often she would return an hour or so later with fresh ingredients as an alibi, there were stretches of half-days where she would vanish late into the night and return, red-eyed, with a guarded exhaustion on her face. Fatin learned it was best not to ask too many questions when she was in these moods; the times she’d tried had ended in Leah’s voice stretching so tight with anger she’d wondered if it might just snap. 

The only other clues she had to whatever Leah was hiding came in the form of her visitors. As far as she could tell, most of them were customers. She would meet them at the door at all hours of day and night, frowning as she listened to their ailments and quickly passing out the appropriate treatment, or poring over her books relentlessly until she found an answer. Fatin loved to watch her work, though she wasn’t sure why- maybe it was in the careful, almost reverent way Leah handled her ingredients, measuring them out with the utmost accuracy and stirring things, steaming and straining and boiling them until she could step back in satisfaction. She took a lot of pride in what she did, anyone with half a brain could see that, and she was evidently very good at it, too. Not once did she charge for her services.

But not all of her visitors were customers. Several times, strangers would approach her door in odd clothes that Fatin had only seen before in the very outer regions, and Leah would usher them outside; they would engage in conversation too quiet for Fatin to overhear, though she was certain she heard the resounding clink of money being exchanged. 

By the time the most interesting visitor arrived, Fatin was starting to heal. Her strength, sapped as it had been, was returning steadily, though nowhere near as quickly as she would have liked. The frustration of hardly being able to stand without Leah’s watchful eye accompanying her was growing worse with each passing day, and she was chafing to get back outside, back to the real world and, if it was at all possible, Toni. She needed to find her, if she was still alive (of course she was alive, she chided herself) and she couldn’t exactly do that laid up in bed in the middle of nowhere. She knew she was starting to improve- she didn’t feel like she’d been set alight quite as often, and Leah no longer started taking notes when she changed her bandages- but even so, she was exhausted by nightfall, most days. So exhausted, that when she heard the light tapping at the door one night two weeks after her arrival, she dismissed it as a customer, hardly noticing the way Leah’s feet almost slid out from under her in her hurry to answer it. Only when a gaping slice of moonlight crept in through the doorway, smearing across the walls like a fresh coat of silver paint, did she take notice, and only out of irritation- _it’s so late,_ she thought. _Who would bother coming around at this hour?_

But then she heard Leah mumble something to her visitor. “It’s fine. She’s asleep.”

Fatin nearly bolted straight upright in surprise, but she managed to force herself back down, body tight with anticipation. A small twinge of guilt flared in her chest at the idea of eavesdropping, but the curiosity welling inside her proved victorious. She lay completely still, listening.

A second voice, definitely not Leah’s, said, “You’re taking a big risk, you know that?”

Leah replied, much quieter. “Of course I know that, I’m not fucking stupid. What was I supposed to do, Dot? Leave her to die?”

Dot, whoever she was, sighed. “Obviously not. That’s not what I’m saying. Just be careful with what you say to her. You don’t even know who she is.”

“She’s an adventurer.”

“She could be lying.”

There was a pause in the conversation, and even in the dark Fatin could see Leah’s furrowed brow, the way she bit her lip. “I trust her.”

“You know what’ll happen if they figure it out.”

“They won’t.”

The silhouette in the doorway shifted. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Leah. It was a really good thing you did, and I’m glad she’s okay, but you need to be more careful about this. If they find you, I’ll try to get you out, but you know I probably won’t be able to.” 

“I’m not asking you to do that.”

“I know.”

Leah rested her head against the doorframe. “Did you manage to fix her sword?”

Dot reached behind her and brought forward a long, slim shape. She pressed it into Leah’s hands. Fatin’s heart leapt at the sight of it. 

“Here. I don’t know what the hell she managed to do to it, but it should be fine now. Fixed a couple of the proportions while I was at it. She’ll find it easier to use.”

“Thank you,” Leah said, voice breathy with something like relief. “I’ll pay you soon, I promise.”

“You’ve never paid me before.”

“It’s time I started.” She paused, glanced away. “I ask too much of you as it is.”

“Hey, you give me just as much. We’re friends. I help you. You help me. Just don’t ask me to help you with your fucking plant stewing again. It took weeks to forget the stink.”

Something that looked like a smile slipped shadow-like across Leah’s mouth. “I’ll stick to asking you to risk your life, then.”

“That’s much more like it.”

“Thank you, Dot. I’ll visit you soon.”

Dot turned to go, but paused at the threshold. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she said over her shoulder. 

“I’m not making any promises,” Leah replied. The door clicked shut.

Fatin quickly rolled away and shut her eyes before she could be spotted. Footsteps paced heavily back and forward across the room, an anxious pattern accompanied by words that she couldn’t quite make out, but could sense the tension behind.

The noises came to a halt. She risked a glance back towards her.

Even from a distance and in the last dregs of faint candlelight, the tightness in Leah’s shoulders was palpable. Her forehead was pressed into the wall. 

“What the hell am I doing?” she said aloud, though who she was asking it was impossible to tell- Fatin, herself, the world as a whole. 

She stood there, unmoving in the dark, long after Fatin’s eyes grew heavy with exhaustion and she passed into sleep once more.

**Author's Note:**

> thank u so so much for reading! u can find me on twitter @toddxnderson <3


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